“THERE YOU ARE!WHY DIDN’T YOU ANSWER ME?!”
Ames wrapped Embry in a hug so tight her back cracked. Even with the unintended chiropractic adjustment, it felt good to fall into the arms of her best friend, into the familiar scent of rose water. Into the arms of someone who both (a) cared deeply and (b) knew without a shadow of a doubt that Embry would never, ever hurt anyone, let alone a friend like Oakley.
Once Ames peeled herself off Embry and entered the Woodcross Residence, Fairfax stepped inside and followed suit in his greetings with a much more muted embrace.
“She’s not an idiot, darling, that’s why,” he said while squeezing Embry’s upper arm. “The Table or the headmaster might demand her phone records and correspondence at any time. And you weren’t exactly subtle in your requests for answers.”
Ames wrinkled her nose at her boyfriend’s explanation. “Well, she could’ve scried me! You can scry through a mirror. Like,anymirror. I know you, Em, and your skin care routine hasn’t fallen to the wayside despite being in the seventh ring of hell. Couldn’t you have sent me anall goodbetween your serums and finishing oil?”
This was soembarrassing. She was a witch. Who could do things. Duh. “If I’d had a coherent thought in the past day-and-a-half, I most certainly would’ve done that. Sorry.”
Embry shut the door and led them to the living room. Soon the coven would descend for the preplanned meeting, but untilmoonrise all was quiet. Daddy had informed her that he and Rye would be working together in the conservatory to prepare. She hadn’t seen Knighton yet, but she had no reason to believe those plans had changed. Embry was glad for the meeting, not simply because it was comforting to anticipate a spot of normalcy but also because it meant her closest witch friends had the perfect excuse to receive special permission to leave the school’s mandatory lockdown and have this exact conversation.
“The truth is I have no idea what happened. I went back to the dorm right after Oakley and I talked…” Embry caught both her friends’ eyes, confirming that, yes, they’d seen the video. Of course they had. “And then in the morning I went to apologize and… then there was the crowd, the body, and Martinelli calling me in for questioning.”
“It’s such horseshit,” Ames groused. “Three years and a lifetime living next to that school and you’d think these people would know you, but apparently, they only see what you are, which again, is just horseshit. Like the big, juicy kind stallions leave on multiuse hiking trails like the single-minded assholes they are.”
“I didn’t know you had such opinions about equine defecation, my love,” Fairfax joked.
“I do when it amounts to the metaphorical equivalent of what a bunch of administrative idiots are doing to my best friend,” Ames sniffed, dropping onto the gloriously plush cushions of the living room’s white sectional. Fairfax squeezed in beside her. “This is literally a witch hunt.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Embry said with a sweep of her hair over her shoulder as she settled into the crook of the sectional’s elbow, her typical spot. “And I understand why they wanted to question me, but we know I didn’t do it. And I wish they weren’t barking up the wrong tree. Oakley deserves justice, and they won’t find it while trying to connect me with what happened to her.”
A strange silence fell over her friends at the period of the sentence.
Embry glanced up to find Ames and Fairfax fumbling through a wordless conversation of raised brows and worried lips. This was unlike them. “What?” Embry asked slowly.
The couple met the question with twin furrowed brows. Ames wound her arms across her chest. Fairfax rubbed at an invisible spot on his pristine pant leg. Finally, Ames spoke, “We know you didn’t do it. Of course you didn’t. But there’s compelling evidence besides the dumb video.”
Embry’s stomach twisted. “Compelling how?”
Fairfax’s eyes were as warm as ever, a hot-chocolate hug in a glance, but the boy’s characteristic charm had been swapped out for a serious expression Embry was certain she’d only ever seen during Jonesy’s acting class. Still, the moment he opened his mouth, it was clear the stoicism was a hundred percent real.
“Alistair had a vision—one that he shared with the investigative teams Saturday morning.” Fairfax’s throat bobbed as Embry’s mind whirred. She blinked at him, her mouth suddenly so parched she couldn’t ask him to continue. Luckily, he did without prodding. “The vision he divined implicates you, Embry.”
She tried to swallow past the scorching dryness in her throat. “Implicates me?”
Both nodded, though it was Fairfax who continued on, the gentler of the two. “Alistair was the one who found Oakley’s body yesterday. He came to the stadium after receiving a vision of you magicking her to death. When he found her exactly as he’d predicted, he sounded the alarm. He was the first student questioned. Even before you.”
Embry felt as if she’d been stabbed straight in the heart. Alistair. Her friend. With the kind eyes and loaded parents and sweetdisposition and occasional memory blindness. The one she’d defended constantly from people—like Balthazar, unfortunately—who didn’t understand his divining power.
And now he’d divined something horrible. Something that implicated her. Something that was false—and was being used against her. Even worse, visions from diviners were routinely used as hard evidence in Table trials. It wasn’t video of her at the scene of the crime, but it was as close as possible in the magical world.
Her heart sank as she realized that maybe,just maybe, if she hadn’t rejected Alistair so publicly, he might have come to her first with his vision. Given her a heads-up and a chance to explain. Instead, he went straight to the authorities. Like he suddenly believed her to be capable of what he’d seen.
Embry was frozen in her spot but felt as if she’d suffered the highest grade of whiplash. This had to be the information Daddy’s lawyers had been attempting to pry out of Inspector Brown and his team.
“I didn’t… How did he… Why would he?” Embry couldn’t get words out. Her heart throbbed; her throat constricted. Again, she felt sweat pricking at her hairline while the rest of her ran icy cold. “I just can’t believe it.”
“I’m sorry, Em” was what Ames said.
“We need to tell Daddy.” Both nodded in agreement. “Should I talk to Alistair? Find out what exactly he saw? I mean, if his vision is wrong, something else is going on here.”
“I mean this in the best way possible, but the last thing you should do is talk with him,” Ames said. “The Table and Martinelli are already asking questions about if you influenced us to say certain positive things about your relationship with Oakley. If you talk to him…”
“It’ll look like witness tampering,” Embry finished. It was asMartinelli had said. What she thought was simply asking clarifying questions could and would look like coercing someone to turn her way. Even Alistair.
Fairfax cleared his throat. “Elton-Bentley isn’t talking to anyone. His room’s been shut up since he gave his statement. Won’t answer to a knock, a text, a note under the door—heck, I sent him an email out of desperation. Silence.”
